


Knowledge He Wished He Didn't Have

by angel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-03
Updated: 2005-11-03
Packaged: 2017-11-17 08:33:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel/pseuds/angel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean lays awake, thinking about the last two years and waiting for Sam's nightmares to start back up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knowledge He Wished He Didn't Have

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at Gumboot Mafia on 11/3/05. An oldie, but a goodie.

Dean lay awake in the darkened hotel room. He didn't know what exactly had woken him, but the feel of the cold steel in his left hand was comforting. He slept every night with the knife tucked under his pillow—a precaution he called it. More like uneasiness. He had his little brother to watch out for again and he’d be damned if anything happened to Sammy on his watch.

He slowly relaxed against his pillow when nothing jumped out of the shadows at him. He turned his attention to Sam, sleeping quietly on the other bed for once. Two years had changed his little brother, changed them both. Dean sighed softly, not wanting to disturb Sam’s first peaceful sleep in a while.  
Sam had known happiness in those two years that he’d been away, Dean reflected silently. Happiness and goodness and normalcy. He’d known love—pure and true—and he’d known what it was like to wake up next to the same woman more than two mornings in a row.

Dean, on the other hand, had mostly known evil in those two years. Too much evil. He’d watched as John Winchester succumbed more and more to a fate that Dean knew he was on the train for too. There was no escaping it once you’d bought the one way ticket to hell.

Dean had known fear too. The more beer and Jack and Jim that his father consumed, the more Dean wondered if that would the night that he wouldn’t be able to wake John from his drunken stupor. His father always sobered up for a hunt though and then the familiar, consuming fear would rise in Dean if he couldn’t find John after a particularly bad battle with a creature or spirit or being. But John always lived to drink another day.

Dean had started taking on hunts of his own just to get away from his father. Sammy had gotten away, and, for that, Dean was grateful…and jealous. Dean had always hated school; he’d always known that all the knowledge that he would need in his life he learned from his father in the dead of night in the middle of nowhere on a hunt. Conversely, he was more than aware that there were other jobs out there in the world that didn’t involve Anasazi symbols, massive quantities of salt, and an unhealthy amount of holy water. He’d once wanted a job like that, but he was too far gone now, in shit so deep that he could barely breathe sometimes. Sammy could still get out though and live one of those lives, and, for that, Dean was envious.

He’d also known a deep, dark, gut-wrenching loneliness while his baby brother had been gone. Sam and John had been the only two people in Dean’s life since he was four-years-old and they’d both left him. Sam put as much distance between them as he could and John took a mental vacation more often than not as time wore on. All that Dean had left was himself and, boy, if that wasn’t a scary thought… But Sam had to find out the hard way that “normal” wasn’t all peaches and cream candy. Dean couldn’t save him from that.

Which led him to failure. Dean had known failure and that was perhaps the hardest lesson that he’d had to endure the past couple years. He couldn’t save his father from himself and he couldn’t save Sammy from the heartbreak of losing Jessica, of losing what little was left of his innocence. Dean had made a promise to his mother—when Sam was still in her womb and Dean thought that he’d gotten there through Mary’s belly button—that he would take care of his baby brother and that he would protect Sammy at all costs. And he’d failed, miserably and with a reckless abandon that only Dean himself could achieve.

Closing his eyes, Dean strained to picture his mother’s face. With each year that passed, Dean’s memories of Mary faded and blurred. He was certain that she had always smelled of vanilla and soap and that her hair had tickled his face when she kissed him good night. Her hands had been soft when she cleaned his cuts and bandaged his little boy bumps and bruises. His mother was everything that his father was not. God, how he missed her.

A moan came from Sam’s bed and Dean’s eyes shot open and focused on his little brother. He waited for Sam to scream Jessica’s name and bolt up from the bed. Dean wished that he could take Sammy’s nightmares away. He didn’t want Sam to join him on the path to the dark side. He didn’t want Sam to have to feel the loneliness and the despair and the fear like Dean did. He couldn’t stop his father’s fall into the abyss, but he could damn sure try to keep Sam from teetering over the edge.

A few seconds later, Sam shot up from the bed, panting and drenched in sweat. Dean moved quickly to Sam’s side and silently, with a firm brotherly pat on the shoulder, assured his brother that he was there.

~Finis


End file.
